Beyond Baghdad: Postmodern War and Peace. By Ralph Peters.
Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Press, 2003. 337 pages. $22.95. Reviewed by Richard
Halloran, free-lance writer and former foreign and military correspondent of The
New York Times.

A pen in the hand of
Ralph Peters, as regular readers of these pages can attest, becomes a harpoon. In his
latest collection of articles, Beyond Baghdad, the lances that Peters hurls are
worthy of the finest Nantucket whaler of yore.

Target number one is
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and what Peters calls his fawning train of
courtiers. High-priority targets include Muslim terrorists, Saudi Arabia and other
Arabs, liberals led by former President Bill Clinton, the French, the Germans, other
Europeans, and airpower. Those who are spared the wrath of Peters, and indeed are objects
of his affection, are soldiers, women, and Israelis.

Like all harpooners,
Peters sometimes misses his mark. He admires China, overlooking Chinese genocide in Tibet,
the suppression of Uighurs in the western province of Xinjiang, territorial claims through
the South China Sea almost to the shores of Indonesia, border skirmishes with India, the
20 million who died in the Cultural Revolution, the massacre at Tienanmen, and the history
of the Middle Kingdom as the would-be suzerain of Asia.

Peters also hurls
shaft after shaft at the American press and television news, asserting that most
correspondents simply dont understand what they are seeing. He may or
may not be right, but he fails to make his case. One thirsts for an authoritative quote, a
hard fact, a few examples, some shred of evidence that a novice copy editor would have
demanded.

Peters is a retired
Army intelligence officer and a prolific writer of books, articles, and fiction under his
own name and as Owen Parry. He says, and this reviewer agrees, that he has always
been suspicious of books compiled from newspaper pieces. He gets away with it in
this case because there is a flow to his collection, although it is marred slightly by
repetition.

Peters
sharpest barbs are aimed at Mr. Rumsfelds posse of commissars, creatures with
no first-hand experience either of the military or of the savage harshness of this
world. Peters asserts: They ridiculed the voices of experience, even implying
that those in uniform had a yellow streak, while the civilian lions safe at their
Washington desks were models not only of wisdom but of courage. Peters is relentless
on this point: If war is too important to be left to the generalsa cheap
platitudethen military policy is far too important to be left to political hacks. We
speak no treason when we tell the truth to our fellow citizens.

Thats early in
this book. Later, Peters thunders:

The civilian
planners, the shameless know-it-alls in expensive suits, who overruled the militarys
request for additional ground forces will bear a measure of responsibil-

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ity for every
American combat death caused because a soldier was simply too tired to react swiftly
enough, because troops were falling asleep over their guns, and because they were asked to
achieve miraclesand have been doing soon the cheap.

Airpower is
magnificent, Peters says, but you cannot take prisoners, or protect refugees, or
secure crucial facilities and resources from the air. And you certainly cannot stop
genocide or ethnic cleansing from the sky. That takes boots on the ground.

Peters argues that
among the reasons Osama bin Ladenthe leader of the terrorist al Qaeda gang still at
large as of this writingfears America is because of our acceptance of women as
full-fledged human beings. Bin Laden, Peters concludes, is not only terrified
of God, but also scared of the girls. On a more affirmative note, Peters says:
Womens self-emancipation is a primary source of Americas present power,
wealth, and social energy.

Peters faults the
Bush Administration for failing to address the obvious source of fundamentalist
terrorism, subversion, and hatred: Saudi Arabia. Supporting the Saudis, he asserts,
is the most preposterous and wrongheaded policy in American history since the
defense of slavery.

He widens that
criticism to a litany of flaws in the Arab world: It contains not a single
world-class university. No Arab state is a true democracy. No Arab state genuinely
respects human rights. No Arab society fully respects the rights of women or
minorities.

The author is
equally acerbic about the French. Paris isnt a third force, but a
third farce, Peters maintains. French behavior in the current crisis is
obsessive, not reasoned, and ultimately self-defeating. He concludes: Every
American who dies in this war will have a French diplomatic bullet in his or her
body.

Of the Germans:
Most difficult of all for us to stomach were remarks from members of the German
government comparing President Bush to Hitler. Europeans, he writes, talk a
great deal, do very little, and blame the United States for homegrown ills. The
European Union is an indispensable employment agency for Europes excess
bureaucrats.

Some of the articles
by Peters have been published in this journal, but many chapters originally appeared in
the New York Post, the conservative tabloid. From that vantage point, he fires at
this reviewers former employers at the cross-town New York Times: The
next time GI Joe goes out to thrash one of your pet dictators, ask a military man
whats going down, instead of trusting the croissant commandos on your staff.

Like some others who
criticize the media, Peters generalizes but fails to cite examples to prove
his point. Instead, he sets up straw men so that he can skewer them in the breastplate. He
laments confused, alarmed reporting. By whom and what was reported? He points
to dire warnings about an impending bloodbath. In what news dispatch or TV
report? Im sick of being told how brilliant our enemies are. Who said
that, when, and where? Peters accuses but doesnt tell us.

Altogether, Ralph
Peters is an angry man who can write, and no onerepeat, no oneshould ever have
any doubt about where he stands on any issue.

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The Road to Rainbow: Army Planning for Global War, 1934-1940.
By Henry G. Gole. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2002. 224 pages.$34.95. Reviewed
by Lieutenant General Richard G. Trefry, USA Ret., Inspector General of the Army,
1978-83, and Military Assistant to the President, 1989-92.

Each publication
year always brings to the public a few unheralded but extremely useful and important
books. In the opinion of this reviewer, The Road to Rainbow is the sleeper of the
year.

The material in this
outstanding book lay fallow in 25 footlockers at the Army War College and was not
discovered until 1957. Thus the historians who wrote the Army Green Books did
not have access to these important papers, and even after they were made available, they
were not given the attention they richly deserved. Maurice Matloff and Edward Snell,
authors of Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare (one of the Green Books) were
not aware such material existed; in fact, they were quoted as believing that limited
in scope, the (pre 1939-41) plans envisaged neither global or total war. That view
apparently was shared by other eminent historians of the era, as no reference is apparent
in any of the Green Book histories.

In the words of the
author, Colonel Henry Gole (USA Ret., Ph.D.): The Army War College course materials
Louis Morton identified four years after Matloff and Snell published Strategic Planning
for Coalition Warfare 1941-1942 are readily available. It seems that no one had
gone through the 1919-1940 course materials in detail with war plans specifically in mind,
nor had anyone on the General Staff or War Plans Division asked what was done at the
college.

Colonel Gole
continues:

In mining the Army
War College curricular materials housed in the Military History Institute, particularly
the war plans addressing coalition warfare from 1934-1940, one finds high grade nuggets
that do in fact modify the way we should understand American war planning between the
World Wars. To assess the significance of [the] work at the college, an appreciation of
the accepted wisdom [related to] war planning is necessary. American strategic planning
may have come of age in 1939-1940, but the spade work done by students and
faculty during the period 1934-1941 at the US Army War College was very important to the
maturation process. That is the main point of this book you see before you.

This is a
particularly relevant point in regard to war planning today. In those days, the number of
people involved in war planning in the United States probably numbered a few hundred. The
color plans were generated in the early part of the century. In those days, plans were
coded as follows:

United States 
Blue
Germany  Black
Japan  Orange

As they matured over
the decades, other countries were added:

Mexico  Green
Canada  Crimson
Great Britain  Red

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Brazil  Purple
Domestic  White

In the late 1930s
these color plans tended to blend due to the threat provided by the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo
axis. Thus the plans melded into the Rainbow Plans, which formed the basis of the strategy
employed for the prosecution of World War II.

The book is divided
into four parts. Part I provides the background and evolution of war planning from the
Root revolution in 1904 to roughly 1934, the era of the color plans. In Part II Dr. Gole
describes the evolution from one-on-one conflict to Participation With Allies,
the planning leading to coalition. Part III of the book, perhaps the most interesting,
discusses the planning from 1938 to 1940 when war became imminent. Finally, in Part IV the
author describes the relationship between the War College and the War Department General
Staff and the products of a cadre of brilliant officers, mostly unknown to this day, who
played such a vital role in the winning of World War II.

On the cover of the
book are four pictures depicting some of the principal planners of World War II. The
picture of the Army planners is particularly interesting, showing some of the members of
the War Plans Division in January 1942. The same picture, enlarged and with the players
identified, is included in the picture section of the book. A study of the careers of the
officers portrayed would be very interesting. Of course, many books have been written
about General Eisenhower, but the rest of the individuals in the picture largely remain
generally unknown.

When one considers
the plethora of strategic think tanks that abound in the country today, inside and outside
of government, and compares what these few men did and how they did it, their contribution
becomes all the more a source of wonderment. There is no question that strategically,
World War II was the best planned and fought war of the 20th century.

A careful study of
this book will provide the reader an education in professional development as well as an
appreciation for the Army School System and the officers it has produced. Of particular
interest is Chapter 12, Professionals in a Small Army. The astute reader will
note that nowhere in this pantheon of military brilliance will one find a single set of
BDUs, nor will any Hooah emanate from the pages. What should impress the
reader is the professional growth of a group of Army officers who were ready and present
for duty when needed at the highest levels of government.

Of particular
interest is the career of General Thomas T. Handy, who, with only a short period of
service with troops, served in War Plans and as General Marshalls Deputy
(todays Vice Chief) for nine years. Few officers, or historians for that matter,
have given thought to the fact that the United States Army in World War II was led
primarily by two graduates of VMI, George C. Marshall and Thomas T. Handy. The author
writes: Thomas T. Handy . . . deserves close attention. He provided unheard-of
continuity in the War Plans/Operation Division, serving from August 1936 until October of
1944, except for one year with the troops (June 1940-June 1941). Chapter 12, coupled
with Chapter 13, provides an enlightening view of a group of extraordinary men during a
critical period of our history as a nation.

Henry Gole has made
a truly significant contribution by authoring this book. Any true professional soldier
will read and re-read this work many times. The role of

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the Army War College
with the Army Staff has changed over the years. For example, as of 1 October 2003, the
Army War College is now assigned to TRADOC. Despite the fact that no relationships endure
forever, the background knowledge provided in this book could be extremely useful as the
attempt is made to transform the Army to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

Thucydides famously
declared his intention to write the history of the war we now call the Peloponnesian War
at its very outset, in the belief that it was going to be a great war and more worth
writing about than any of those which had taken place in the past. History has
shared his assessmentin no small measure because of the power of his own masterful
telling of the story and the philosophical depth of his commentary on its events.

It was, after all, a
war that spanned 27 years and in the end destroyed all the major combatants and their
civilization. It contains powerful examples of successful and unsuccessful periods of
civil-military relations. It demonstrates the revolutions in military affairs
necessitated by encounters with novel weapons, tactics, and operational concepts. It
dramatically shows the relationship of military power to economics, cultural assumptions,
and forms of government.

It has been mined
for instruction from innumerable perspectives. Naval theorists look to it as an example of
the might of the seapower of Athens and the lessons to be learned when, as in the early
stages of the war, an almost wholly land-based power such as Sparta attempts to engage a
powerful seapower. Political scientists who have never bothered to read even a significant
fraction of the work have for generations shamelessly ripped the Melian Dialogue
between Athens generals and the hapless leaders of the neutral city of Melos from
context to provide the standard illustration of realism as a theory of
international relations. Students of military leadership find the examples of Pericles,
Brasidas, Demosthenes, and even Alcibiades timeless illustrations of leadership,
character, and strategy.

Donald D. Kagan,
Sterling Professor of Classics and History at Yale University, has for many years been the
foremost authority to consult on fine points of history and interpretation of the events
of the period in large and specialized volumes such as Pericles of Athens and the Birth
of Democracy, The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition, and The
Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, to name only some of his earlier works. The present
volume, The Peloponnesian War, is a successful effort to distill decades of
specialized scholarship into a one-volume overview of the whole, accessible to a reader
who might not have a need or desire for the extremely close assessment of detail in the
earlier works. As such, it becomes the single best volume for readers looking to gain a
comprehensive understanding of the wars causes, conduct, and outcomes.

The latter is
especially important because Thucydides died before the completion of the war, so even a
complete and careful reading of his text leaves

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events incomplete.
But also, for all the justifiable praise heaped upon his scrupulosity as a historian
(especially one writing at the very dawn of the discipline of objective history), there
are important gaps and obscurities within his text that Kagans comprehensive
knowledge of alternate sources helps to fill. Where there are inscriptions of the period,
or lines and characters from Athens dramatic literature of the period that serve to
illuminate Thucydides obscurities or gaps, Kagan consistently has them ready at hand
to clarify. In this regard, reading Kagan in parallel with Thucydides own writing
will be an invaluable aid to a reader attempting to work through the admittedly somewhat
daunting prose of Thucydides text alone.

The Peloponnesian
War is so rich, however, that much depends on the angle from which the student of it
wishes to approach the material. It is many things. For the student of Classical Culture
and civilization, getting as much clarity as possible about exactly what happened and why
it happened is the paramount issue. For this interest, Kagan is consistently one of the
most reliable guidesboth in this volume and in the earlier, more detailed studies of
specific periods and aspects of the war. For the student of military history, campaign
analysis, or weapons and tactics of the period, the Peloponnesian War is also a rich
repository of examples. Here again, readers seeking a full understanding of these
technical-military matters can look to Kagan for clarity and illumination.

There is no
substitute, of course, for reading Thucydides History directly. It is not the
facts about the war or about military technical or operational issues that makes this war
perennially and uniquely worthy of study. Credit for that goes ultimately to the mind of
its original historian, Thucydides, who succeeded magnificently in his aim that his work
be a possession for all time. It is the mind of Thucydides that added the
dimension of philosophical depth that elevates the events of ancient Greece to the realm
of timeless truth. His wry wit, his cutting asides, his determination to see through to
the root causes of thingsthese elevate his history far above a recounting of facts.
It is through his vision and word that we see the awful truth of what human nature is
capable of doing.

Donald Kagan has
provided us with a masterful single-volume history of the Peloponnesian Warone every
student of the conflict will find invaluable. But in the end, as Im sure hed
agree, it is an invaluable aid to understanding a conflict that gains its perennial value
through the mind and vision of Thucydides himself. No accurate telling of the facts of the
conflict can ever hope to capture the grandeur of Thucydides insight into the human
and moral meaning of those events.

General Bob
Scales Yellow Smoke is a timely review of the current condition of warfare
and a projection of a possible future condition associated with the conduct of war. Scales
advances his argument from solid ground as an experienced

128/29

military historian,
theorist, and soldier. He defines his tasks and vantage point clearly in the preface,
noting that much of what he believes about the future of land war stems from his
experience, study, and efforts leading the Army After Next Wargame series at the Army War
College. Scales sets out to define the environment of limited warfare, identify some
lessons and insights, and draw on these to suggest how the United States may fight land
warfare in the future. Simply put, General Scales thesis is that the United States
is developing a style of warfare based on substituting firepower for manpower and then he
stipulates how that development will continue in the future. Finally, he seeks to
accomplish this in the context of what he perceives are the most likely wars for the
United Stateswars of limited objectives and means.

The authors
argument that the substitution of firepower for manpower is new or relatively new is not
necessarily consistent with the historiography of the American military experience.
Certainly Russell Weigley, Maurice Matloff, and others argue that the American way of war,
at least since the Civil War, has favored attrition rather than maneuver and that the
Army, at least, has organized and equipped to do that. Accordingly, the Army has sought to
generate a firepower advantage over opponents in the field. This does not invalidate the
authors assertion, since he also argues that maneuvering to achieve firepower
advantage is increasingly a part of the American style of war.

General Scales
argues that the US inclination toward substituting firepower for manpower will be enabled
and accelerated by technologies affording stealthy weapon systems, greater precision, and
better information. To demonstrate this trend he cites recent examples where the
application of firepower rather than troops in the close assault afforded success and
notes a growing trend in this direction. Scales is, for the most part, convincing in
building a historical case, citing the thinning of troops in the battle space and a
growing trend toward decentralized combat.

The author believes
this trend will provide an absolute advantage that will enable American forces to wage
limited warfare against regional powers that seek by coup de main to overwhelm their
neighbors. To illustrate the case for his vision of future warfare, he posits a Serbian
invasion of Kosovo in 2020 that is ultimately defeated by a lighter, more lethal ground
force deployed rapidly into the theater and supported by closely integrated joint forces.

His example is
plausible, and the combat developments he posits to make ground forces lighter, more
lethal, and more maneuverable are believable. Nonetheless, his argument is not entirely
convincing for several reasons. At one point Scales opines, Close combat may in the
future become less deadly. This is possible only if US armed forces are able to
avoid the close fightin this case close means that American forces must remain
outside the effective range of enemy direct-fire weapons. This is a proposition that may
not obtain for at least two reasons. If technology continues to be proliferated by friends
and foes of the United States, it does not automatically follow that the close fight will
become less lethal. If anything, this proliferation is likely to afford relatively weak
opponents the opportunity to buy niche technology, affording them an advantage
against a lighter ground combat force. Second, the US forces may not be able to dictate
the range of the close fight. Irregular forces that choose to fight in mufti and from
ambush will be able to dramatically decrease the range.

129/30

The author also
argues that the United States will need to assume risks logistically to accelerate the
strategic pace of deployment. Perhaps so, but recent experience in Iraq suggests, as one
general officer put it, just-in-time logistics isnt. No one will argue
that American forces should deploy more slowly, but speed alone is not the answer. If
ground forces have to close with an enemy in compartmented terrain, then agility and
information technology may not be enough. Finally, General Scales Kosovo example
does not account adequately for the problem of transition. What happens when major combat
operations are concluded and fewer units must confront an insurgency where their strategic
and operational speed may not be as critical as their tactical survivability?

Still, despite these
criticisms, General Scales delivers where it matters. He illuminates the actual trends in
combat and doctrinal development implicit in the Department of Defense transformation
presently under way. How the department and the services solve the dilemma of an opponent
determined to close with American ground forces and how our forces are sustained across
strategic distances are arguably the most important questions for the successful
transformation of Americas military. The author is absolutely right when he argues
that transforming the ground force is a far more urgent problem than transforming sea and
air forces, given US preeminence in these latter domains. General Scales also points out
that there are no opponents of the United States on the horizon that will confront America
in formation warfare. Thus the ability of our armed services transformed to defeat
symmetrically organized regional opponents is not the central question. The critical issue
is how do we match up against those who fight below the threshold of American technical
intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance means, and who may be able to exploit
vulnerabilities inherent in these lighter, more efficient forces.

Their War for Korea: American, Asian, and European Combatants
and Civilians, 1945-1953.By Allan R. Millett. Washington: Brasseys,
2002. 311 pages. $25.95. Reviewed by Colonel Donald W. Boose, Jr., USA Ret., who
teaches in the US Army War College Department of Distance Education. While on active duty
he served with the Military Armistice Commission in Korea, and as Assistant Chief of Staff
for Strategic Plans and Policy, US Forces, Japan.

Allan R. Millett, a
retired Marine Corps Reserve colonel and history professor at Ohio State University, will
be well known to many readers of Parameters. The author of a history of the Marine
Corps and other historical and biographical works, he has collaborated with Williamson
Murray in a series of detailed studies of military effectiveness and on a history of World
War II. In recent years, he has focused on the Korean War, producing a number of valuable
monographs on various aspects of the war and establishing an extensive network of
colleagues and informants, including many Korean War veterans. It has long been expected
that he will produce a comprehensive history of the war. Their War for Korea is not
that comprehensive history, but a collection of personal reminiscences by those who fought
in or were directly affected by the war. Millett provides commentary on each of these in-

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dividual accounts,
putting them in the larger context of the war. His goal is to find [the] meaning of
the Korean War through the experiences of individuals and small groups of people.

As the title
suggests, Millett sees the period from 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953 as only the most
violent phase of a war that began much earlier and has not yet concluded. In a
preface explaining his own background as a historian of the Korean War and setting the
stage for the 46 vignettes that make up the book, Millett points out that the first three
names on the South Korean memorial to those slain in the war are those of National Police
who died in September 1945. But Millett argues that the beginning of the Korean War can be
traced back even further, at least to the 1920s, when two separate and competing groups of
Korean nationalists began struggling against the Japanese occupation of the peninsula and
toward two very different conceptions of Koreas future. Both were firmly rooted in
the long and rich Korean cultural tradition. One group, based on Marxism-Leninism, would
eventually lead the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) in the north. The
other, a heterogeneous group of Western-influenced modernizers, land owners,
entrepreneurs, traditionalists, and a few who had accommodated themselves to the Japanese,
would become the leadership of the Republic of Korea (ROK) in the south. The division was
intensified when the Soviet Union and the United States occupied North and South Korea in
1945. The Cold War has ended, but the north-south confrontation continues on the
peninsula. As Millett demonstrates in one chapter focused on the truce talks and another
entitled The War Goes On for Some Koreans, the 1953 Korean Armistice
terminated the conflict, but it did not resolve the underlying issues that caused the war.

Most of the stories
in Their War for Korea, however, deal with the 1950-1953 violent phase
of the war. Milletts approach is personal and informal. He recounts his meetings
with the books subjects and then presents their own accounts. In these pages, the
reader will meet generals and foot soldiers, guerrilla fighters and pilots (American,
North Korean, and Russian), statesmen and spies, refugees and war criminals, war
profiteers and self-sacrificing heroes. Based as it is primarily on interviews with people
known personally to Millett, the books coverage is inevitably unbalanced. More than
half of the stories are those of US veterans, 12 concern ROK soldiers and civilians, and
six involve non-US United Nations Command (UNC) allies (from Australia, Belgium, the
Netherlands, the Philippines, Thailand, and the United Kingdom). Only four chapters focus
on the North Koreans, two on the Chinese, and one on the Russian pilots who flew combat
missions over North Korea. Most of these accounts are based on Milletts personal
interviews, but a few, including the chapters on General Peng Dehuai (commander of the
Communist Chinese Peoples Volunteers Army [CPVA] in Korea), on the North Korean and
CPVA soldiers, and on the Russian pilots, are based on memoirs and other sources. In the
course of presenting these personal stories, Millett adds a substantial amount of
historical information on almost every facet of the war. In addition to his long preface,
he also provides a summary of the war, a guide to further reading, useful statistical
information, a chronology, a glossary that includes many but not all of the acronyms,
abbreviations, and non-English words that appear in the text, and a comprehensive index.
The book has no maps, however, so

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those not familiar
with Korean geography may find the frequent references to geographical locations puzzling.

Millett is a
reliable guide and there are very few typographical or other errors in the book, although
the chronology does contain one puzzling and misleading entry: July 1844: treaty
establishing commercial relations between Kingdom of Korea and United States signed.
In fact, the treaty signed in 1844 was with China and, although there was some talk in the
US Congress of attempting to negotiate a treaty with Korea in the same year, no action was
taken and a US-Korea treaty was not signed until 1882. Millett also occasionally uses,
without explanation, terms not found in the glossary. When he writes that a man who fought
during the war as a teenage guerrilla recalls his lost youth with considerable han,
even a reader unfamiliar with the Korean language and culture might guess that Millett is
describing a sense of regret, sadness, and anger. But that same reader may be
mystified when told that a certain general felt like an outsider because he had married a kisaeng
(an upscale woman entertainer).

These are not major
problems. Those already familiar with Korean history and culture and with the Korean War
will find this book to be a rich and fascinating feast, filled with intriguing sidelights
on well-known personalities and events. Those without previous background on the war,
although they may initially find its episodic character and the wealth of unfamiliar
detail to be a challenge, will also be rewarded and enlightened.

Allan Millett
succeeds in presenting the tragedy and complexity of the Korean War and powerfully
demonstrates that for those who participated, and especially for Koreans, Their War for
Korea was total, uncompromising, and bitter. It brought unimaginable suffering
to all the Korean people, which continues fifty years later.

In the Company of Heroes. By Michael J. Durant (CW4, USA
Ret.) with Steven Hartov. New York: G. P. Putnams Sons, 2003. 361 pages. $24.95. Reviewed
by Dr. Henry G. Gole (Colonel, USA Ret.), a special operations veteran and author of The
Road to Rainbow: Army Planning for Global War, 1934-1940.

Your reviewer
commends In the Company of Heroes to readers who care to know just what elite
American soldiers do in training and in combat, and how they feel about their work.
Graphic in its description of concrete and grisly events, the book is also an anthem, a
song of praise and joy to the brotherhood of warriors by a tough soldier who loves his
buddies.

Blackhawk helicopter
master aviator Michael Durants story of his experience in combat and confinement as
a prisoner of war (POW) in Mogadishu, Somalia, is the centerpiece of the book. Its a
story that grabs the reader and refuses to let go. But Durant and professional writer
Steven Hartov go a step further by putting the actions and reflections they describe so
well in context. Seriously injured and almost immobile, Durant had time to think while in
enemy hands, expecting to die, from 3 to 14 October 1993. Ruminating about how he got to
his near-hopeless situation as a POW allows him to describe: relevant aspects of the US
military organiza-

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tion; the evolution
of special operations after the spectacular failure of Desert One in April 1980; and, most
particularly, the Night Stalkers, the 160th SOAR (A) (Special Operations Aviation
Regiment, Army), unmatched flying professionals whose work is their passion. The tactical
situation emerges in great clarity, and his criticism of policy affecting the structure of
the US forces in Somalia is brief and lucid. (It could have been a politicized rant, since
Durants friends died as a consequence of the armored force requested and denied. He
avoids that temptation.)

US military forces
launched Operation Restore Hope, a humanitarian effort in support of the United Nations to
feed starving people in Somalia, in December 1992. Somali warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid
pillaged and sold the humanitarian aid for profit. Task Force Ranger, composed of US Army,
Navy, and Air Force special operators, was ordered to capture Aidid and his key people.
Mark Bowdens book, Black Hawk Down, and the film of the same name, capture
the feel of the operation and describe it well. In the Company of Heroes focuses on
Durants actions, observations, and thoughts, beginning with the snatch operation of
3 October 1993 that turned bad early and got much worse.

An RPG (the
shoulder-fired Rocket Propelled Grenade system that has been killing American troops from
Vietnam in the 1960s to Iraq in 2004) knocked Durants Black Hawk out of the sky,
killing his crew and leaving him injured, alone in Mogadishu and about to be overrun by a
mob prepared to tear him apart. Sergeants Gary Gordon and Randy Shugart, Delta Force
operators, observing from another bird a living American in the wreck, persisted in
requests to be put on the ground until permission was granted. Facing almost certain
death, Gordon and Shugart extracted Durant, put him in a safer location, and died fighting
off the crazed mob.

Durant was surprised
to find himself alive, taken from the mob by Somali leaders who recognized his value to
them in bargaining with the Americans. But he didnt exactly get a free ride. In
addition to a compound fracture of his upper leg and severe and painful injury to his
back, his cheek was broken and an eye was injured when he was clubbed with the severed
limb of a comrade. Then he was shot and peppered with concrete and cinder block pieces.
His worst experiences were moves from one location to another that found him tossed and
folded into small cars, causing excruciating pain. He drank water from a bowl also used as
a urine receptacle, slept on concrete floors, and fought off the ubiquitous black flies
some of us remember from the TV coverage of starving Somali children.

A weaker man would
have recognized the hopelessness of his plight and surrendered to despair. Durant, the
beneficiary of excellent training and a solid moral foundation, used both to survive and
to prepare for even more disappointment and pain. A lukewarm Roman Catholic before his
capture, he found strength as a POW in revivified religious faith, a story heard from
others who survived the POW experience. But his bond to his friends was key. He was
convinced that Night Stalkers Dont Quit, the motto of the 160th, was a
promise; and he believed his commander who said early in the mission that no one would be
left behind. Confirmation came from the sky. His friends, not knowing his location,
over-flew the city while broadcasting, Mike Durant. We will not leave without
you. Hearing that, Durant smiled in the knowledge that despite all obstacles, the
world was in order.

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Then his favorite
songs were played on Armed Forces Network, dedicated to him by his friends. The bond
sustained him.

This book will
provide the general reader with insight into the world of special operations. Professional
military people will pop their shirt buttons, proud in sharing service to the United
States of America with Mike Durant.

The United States and Coercive Diplomacy. Edited by Robert
J. Art and Patrick M. Cronin. Washington: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2003.
442 pages. $45.00 ($19.95 paper). Reviewed by Colonel Alan G. Stolberg, Director of
European Studies and the National Security Policy Program, US Army War College.

Frederick the Great,
the 18th-century Prussian monarch, is reputed to have said that diplomacy without arms is
like music without the instruments. From Fredericks perspective, diplomats clearly
were not going to have much chance at success unless they had the support of the
profession of arms. Even with the backing of the armed forces, the diplomats could still
fail. This was especially true if a state was attempting to coerce or compel another state
to undo something significant that it had already initiated. In fact, it would appear from
the findings of The United States and Coercive Diplomacy that even with all
appropriate support mechanisms in place, including the armed forces, the chances for a
states coercive diplomatic strategy to succeed are still marginal.

Building on the
foundation of coercive diplomacy theory developed in the Cold War era by the legendary
Stanford professor Alexander George, editors Robert Art, noted professor of international
relations at Brandeis University, and Patrick Cronin, former director of research and
studies at the US Institute of Peace and current assistant administrator for the State
Departments Agency for International Development, set out to determine the potential
for coercive diplomacy to succeed in the post-Cold War world. In this work they focus the
research of seven fine authors to assess the viability of the coercive diplomacy approach
to a spectrum of crisis situations that America has found itself in since 1991.

The evaluation of
regional and functional issues ranging from Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Haiti, to North
Korea, China-Taiwan, Iraq, and the war on terror is viewed through the prism of a coercive
diplomacy that seeks a behavioral change in an adversarial state by compelling it to
either stop doing something it is currently doing, or begin doing something it had not
been doing. Two primary types of coercion are identified: the diplomatic threat of the use
of force, and the actual employment of force on a limited scale. The use of force can
either be a demonstration or limited employment, in either case to convince the target
state of the coercers determination to resolve the crisis in its favor. In addition
to the stick approach of diplomatic and military threats, a state also can use carrot-like
inducements such as the transfer of resources or the offer of other things for tangible
benefit. Most important, coercive diplomacy should never be viewed as an option unless the
coercing state is prepared for the failure of this approach, ultimately requiring either
the full use of all-out armed force or acquiescence to the target states desires.

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The authors make it
clear early on that coercive diplomacy is difficult at best. While these efforts can
convey the increasing probability of more punishment to come should the target state fail
to comply, if the target state does not fear the coercing state or if the target state
cares more about the goals of its efforts than the coercing state, any amount of coercive
diplomacy is bound to break down. US attempts to diplomatically coerce Somali warlords,
Serbia over Kosovo, North Korean nuclear efforts, and Iraq on WMD disarmament were judged
failures because in each case the target state felt that it had much more to lose than the
damage that the application of limited American force would produce. US attempts in the
war on terror to compel either state or sub-state actors to refrain from the execution of
support for terror strikes were considered to be failures, with the possible exception of
deterring Iraq by the US strike on Iraqi intelligence headquarters in 1993 in response to
a reported plan to assassinate former President Bush. It was determined that radical
Islamic terror movements were simply too motivated to be compelled not to strike.

Combining the data
from this study with Alexander Georges assessment of a number of other cases during
the Cold War indicates that coercive diplomacy can be depended upon for success only about
25 or 30 percent of the time. Motivation for the states involved remains the key variable.
It all comes down to how badly a state or sub-state actor believes it needs to do
something. If it perceives that it wants or needs something bad enough, it will endure,
whatever the cost, thus negating the impact of coercive diplomacy and its limited use of
force.

This is all the more
reason why this study is so critical at this time in American and global history. Future
threats of the 21st century, like transnational terrorism and North Korean nuclear
proliferation, will remain key tests for coercive diplomatic theorists and policymakers
alike. The evidence tells us that this approach is unlikely to work in these cases because
the target actors are so intensely motivated. As a result, serious students and
policymakers need to read this superb work as part of their efforts to develop alternate
approaches, including the application of force well beyond anything simply considered
coercive.

The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and
Recovery. By Wolfgang Schivelbusch. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003. 416 pages.
$27.50. Reviewed by Colonel Cole C. Kingseed, USA Ret., Chief of Military History,
US Military Academy, 1999-2001.

In light of the
coalition victory over the military forces of Saddam Hussein, it may appear ironic that
Wolfgang Schivelbuschs most recent book has captured so much interest. In reminding
us that defeat follows war as ashes follow fire, Schivelbusch examines the
phenomenon of military defeat as a structure that transcends national and social borders.
Using three seminal cases of modern warfarethe American South after the Civil War,
France following the Franco-Prussian War, and Germany after World War IThe
Culture of Defeat comes at an opportune time. How these societies survived in lieu of
being dismantled by the victors forms the basis of this provocative anthology that opens
new avenues for historical inquiry.

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Schivelbusch is
hardly a stranger to social history. An independent scholar, his previous works include The
Railway Journey: The Industrialization and Perception of Time and Space and In a
Cold Crater: Cultural and Intellectual Life in Berlin, 1945-1948. In his current
study, Schivelbusch opines that what triumphs today will be defeated tomorrow.
The three case studies are quite illustrative. Over the course of the five decades that
span the collapse of the Confederacy to the defeat of Imperial Germany, the author
chronicles the psychological and cultural fallout of the defeated states.

Schivelbusch posits
that war, death, and rebirth are culturally linked. Following military defeat, the
vanquished frequently imitate the victors almost by reflex. Those nations that survive
without being dismantled by the victors usually adopt a two-level process. During the
initial phase the prewar social and political elites adopt a form of myth to mitigate the
psychological impact of military defeat, hence the lost cause of the
Confederacy and the stabbed in the back theory by the German military
aristocracy following Versailles. Next the defeated states begin the process of rebirth
and recovery that eventually leads to a transformation of society.

Nowhere were these
processes more evident than the postwar South. Schivelbusch argues persuasively that
following the end of the Reconstruction era, the South attempted to transform itself into
a mirror image of the North. From the chaos of military defeat, the South immediately
adopted the myth of the lost cause and dropped its call for independence and its adherence
to a failed economic system and the theory of states rights that led to its defeat.
Despite the distinctiveness of the Souths own culture, postwar Southern history was
destined to be one of reunification and reconciliation with the North.
With limited success, the South strove for economic modernization and industrialization
and a symbolic marriage with its previous adversary, thus completing the cycle of
plantation society, war, and rebirth.

A similar phenomenon
occurred in France in the wake of its defeat during the Franco-Prussian War. Here
Schivelbusch examines both the military defeat at the hands of Bismarcks Prussia and
the resulting civil war, highlighted by the Paris Commune. As did the South, France
found a scapegoat in its military defeat. Marshal Achilles Francois Baseline, who allowed
his army corps to be encircled at Metz, emerged as the principal architect of French
defeat. So too was Napoleon IIIs regime totally discredited. France took some solace
in that it accepted defeat by a unified Germany, vice Prussia, its traditional enemy. The
harsh terms of the treaty soon gave rise to La Revanche, a political
religion and integrating force that unified the Third Republic. To modernize, the republic
then adopted a policy of economic and cultural imperialism to distance itself from
its military defeat, to provide a degree of compensation, and to stimulate regeneration,
and to forge a new national mission.

Schivelbusch then
turns his attention to Weimar Germany. According to the author, the German capitulation in
World War I was historically unique in that no nation had laid down its arms with its
forces so deep in enemy territory. Whether Germany could have held the Rhine River line as
some European politicians claimed is highly dubious. In any event, the militarys
fictitious claim that it had never been defeated in battle rapidly emerged as
a prevalent theme in Weimar Germany. Weimar Germanys embrace of an American-style
economy can thus be

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seen as a
desire for stability after an exhilarating but perilous roller-coaster ride. When
economic disaster followed global economic depression in the early 1930s, an awaiting
Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists then adopted American-style capitalism and mass
manipulation to create a modern industrial state. Despite Hitlers claims to the
contrary, Schivelbusch argues that Germany was an eager student of American methods,
including the extermination of the Native American tribes and its mass production of
consumer goods.

In a chilling
epilogue, Schivelbusch adds a dramatic warning to the United States in the wake of
Americas withdrawal from Southeast Asia three decades ago. Schivelbusch posits that
Americas post-Vietnam malaise was shattered by the terrorist attacks of 11 September
2001. These attacks uncovered the suppressed remains of Americas defeat in Vietnam
and the failed attempt to rescue the Iranian hostages in 1980. Thus the American psyche is
a vacuum crying to be filled with an act of military revenge for which there is no
addressee. Recent addressees now include the former Taliban regime of Afghanistan
and the government of Saddam Hussein. How these nations are striving to cope with defeat
and regenerate themselves may very well reveal lessons derived from Schivelbuschs
landmark study.

To Destroy a City: Strategic Bombing and Its Human Consequences
in World War II. By Hermann Knell. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2003. 373 pages.
$32.50. Reviewed by Jeffrey Record, Visiting Research Professor, Strategic Studies
Institute, US Army War College, and author of Dark Victory, Americas Second War
Against Iraq (forthcoming).

Hermann Knell was a
19-year-old living in the crowded old medieval town of Würzburg, Germany, on the night of
16-17 March 1945 when hundreds of Allied bombers paid a lethal visit. In one night, the
bombers killed more than 5,000 people and flattened 92 percent of the citys
structures, leaving 90,000 Würzburgers homeless. To Destroy a City combines
Knells personal memoir of that night and a discourse on the why of it.
Germanys collapse was imminent and its major industrial cities lay in ruins.
Why, asks Knell, would such a city of small strategic value and with few
facilities to support the German war effort be the target of a bomber fleet?

Knell arrives, I
believe, at the right answer, but the journey to it leaves much to be desired. As a
self-acknowledged amateur historian, Knell sometimes gets his facts wrong (he twice dates
Hitlers reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1935), occasionally dwells on topics not
germane to his subject (e.g., the political origins of World War I, the relationship of
the Treaty of Versailles and Hitlers rise to power), and on at least one issue falls
for a whopper (Goebbels claim that the Nazi invasion of Russia was a preemptive
attack on a Soviet army assembling for an invasion of Germany). He also blames the Allies
for the failure of the 20 July 1944 plot by a group of dissident German officers to
overthrow the Nazi regime, when in fact the Allies were in no position to act on the
attempted coup, which failed because of bad luck, plotter incompetence, and Goebbels
quick thinking.

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An engineer by trade
and now a Canadian citizen, Knell furthermore wanders through the history of strategic
bombing (from 1914 to 1945), paying much attention to its horrors (as one would expect of
someone who experienced them) but not enough attention to the power and attraction of the
idea behind it. During the interwar period, British and American proponents of strategic
bombardment believed they had discovered a way to win wars without the necessity of bloody
and protracted land combat, and they pursued their vision right through World War II,
notwithstanding the early degeneration of the strategic air campaign against Germany into
an aerial trench warfare of attrition between Allied bombers, German fighters, and flak.
The Allies prevailed in the end only by using bombers as bait to bring up the German
fighters, which were then downed by P-51s and P-47s. By March 1945, of course, the Allies
owned Germanys skies, the momentum of the strategic bombing campaign had become
irresistible, and the mass slaughter of civilians had become routine. Würzburgs
destruction may have counted for nothing on the strategic ledger, but the Allies were
running out of significant targets. What else was there to do but to keep bombing? Knell
sums it up correctly: Würzburg was bombed because the bombing offensive had long
ago become an end to itself, with its own momentum, it own purpose, devoid of tactical or
strategic value, indifferent to the needless suffering and destruction it caused.

Knells
greatest strength is the personal perspective he brings to the subject. The literature on
strategic bombing available in English is short on the perspectives of those who were
bombed as opposed to those who were doing the bombing. And any way you cut it, then or
now, the indiscriminate bombing of civilians is an act of terrorism. British Bomber
Commands Arthur Bomber Harris made no bones about ithe believed in
terrorizing the German population into overthrowing their government. To be sure, those
who directed the US Armys Mighty Eighth Air Force may have believed or
at least wanted to believe that they were conducting precision bombing of legitimate
military and economic targets, but Dresden and the mass incineration of Japans
cities put an end to any pretense of it. Such are the wages of total war.

But if Knell is
certainly right in concluding that strategic bombing between 1914 and 1945 does not
represent a leaf of honor in the annals of mankind, he is wrong to say that
the losses and destruction were unnecessary. In the case of World War II, more
than just civilians were being destroyed by Bomber Command and Eighth Air Force. Strategic
bombing wrecked much of the Axiss war-making capacity and forced that enemy to
divert enormous resources into air defense, pulled most of the Luftwaffe off the
Russians backs, and helped isolate the Normandy beaches from German reinforcement.
Indeed, it is difficult to imagine defeating Nazi Germany absent air superiority over
Europe (including Normandy on 6 June 1944), which was obtained by compelling the Luftwaffe
to exhaust itself against ever-larger waves of Allied bombers and their escort fighters.
In the case of Japan, strategic bombing, with the tremendous psychological assist of two
atomic weapons, arguably spared the United Statesand the Japanesethe bloodbath
of an invasion of the home islands. The price of all these successes was, of course, paid
out in the form of hundreds of thousands of German and Japanese civilian lives. But this

138/39

was total war, and
there was no other way to get at the enemys war-making capacity except via strategic
air attack using technologies that could not be employed in a manner that spared
civilians.

To Destroy a City
offers a unique and valuable perspective on a still very contentious subject.

In the aftermath of
11 September 2001, the need for up-to-date, reliable, and authoritative information and
analysis of the world around us has never been greater. At the same time security
practitioners are surrounded by a dizzying array of monographs, periodicals, electronic
newsletters, websites, and talking heads, each of which purports to be the most respected
and indispensable. The most timely open-source materials tend to range between opinion
pieces (frequently devoid of facts and footnotes) and journalism (usually firsthand
accounts but based largely on anecdotes), but neither one is the most solid foundation
upon which to base ones judgments. More authoritative and thorough analyses by
recognized experts can be found in journal articles and books, but these are inevitably
dated by the time they appear in print.

Fortunately,
security practitioners who focus on Asia now have an excellent resource that is timely,
authoritative, and meaty. For the second year in a row, the National Bureau of Asian
Research (NBR), based in Seattle, has published a superb collection of essays surveying
the major countries and sub-regions of Asia. This volume is a product of the collective
efforts of a team of talented scholars, analysts, and strategic thinkers. NBR is fortunate
to have as its senior advisor on this project former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
General John Shalikashvili (USA Ret.). Strategic Asia contains chapters on the
United States, China, Japan, Korea, Russia, Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and
a chapter examining Islam and Asian security. The volume includes valuable features like
maps, a 20-page section of statistical charts and figures, and, thankfully, an index.
Those who desire more information and want to check an authors sources can consult
endnotes at the conclusion of every chapter. This reviewer found all the contributions to
be of very high quality, with the chapters on China by Thomas Christensen (Princeton
University) and on Russia by William Wohlforth (Dartmouth College) particularly masterful.

This strategic
survey compares very favorably with other similar sources available and has one additional
feature that many of the following print sources do not: a long shelf life.
Honolulus East-West Center annually publishes a useful Asian Security Outlook,
but this is a less-meaty indicator of how security analysts in a particular country tend
to see their countrys own strategic outlook. Still more concise is the Northeast
Asia Survey published by the Brookings Institutions Center for Northeast Asia
Policy Studies. Other useful, timely, and authoritative print sources

139/40

on contemporary Asia
include the September issue of the journal Current History, which focuses on China
and East Asia, and the January/February issue of the bimonthly journal Asian Survey,
which features country-by-country reviews of the previous year.

A security
practitioner who is looking for an authoritative and up-to-date strategic survey of Asia
need look no further than Strategic Asia 2002-03. This volume is indispensable.

This is a rich
survey of military values in diverse cultures, from ancient Greek and Roman to medieval
Scandinavian, from Native American to Chinese and Japanese. The book also has the virtue
of treating each of its disparate traditions in depth and with care. Eight of its nine
chapters were written by Shannon French, an ethicist who teaches at the US Naval Academy.
The remaining chapter was penned by Felicia Ackerman, a professor of philosophy at Brown
University who was one of Frenchs Ph.D. advisers.

Although Code of
the Warrior exhibits close reading of primary texts as well as mastery of pertinent
scholarly commentaries, it is fortunately free of burdensome academic jargon, and would
thus be useful in undergraduate ethics courses and among general audiences. Its value
would be greatest for budding officers in military academies or university ROTC programs,
but senior military leaders would also benefit from its reading. This is one of the best
books in military ethics since the 1989 publication of Anthony Hartles Moral
Issues in Military Decision Making. In fact, Frenchs and Hartles books
might profitably be read together, since they cover different but important and
complementary topic areas.

French is not
satisfied with approaches to teaching military ethics that rely exclusively on lists of
rules, believing that they unwisely neglect motivation and character. In that connection,
she draws on a number of studies bearing on the moral psychology of warriors, such as Mark
Osiels Obeying Orders: Atrocity, Military Discipline, and the Law of War, and
concludes that detailed briefings for soldiers and officers on the laws of war must be
reinforced through (a) stories of role models who remained true to their codes of
honor even in the face of nearly overwhelming challenges or temptations, and (b)
shaming tactics to inculcate a strong aversion to behaving in ways inconsistent with their
organizational codes.

Code of the
Warrior contains a wonderful examination of Homers Iliad, helping the
reader to understand how a particular sense of honor on the part of its characters could
produce admirable figures like Hector on the one hand, yet also generate a devastating and
tragic war between Greeks and Trojans from a seemingly trivial affair between Paris and
Helen.

The author also
presents a perspective rarely discussed in books on military ethics: the Vikings. What, we
might ask, could those bad boys (and girls) possi-

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bly teach modern
warriors about ethics? Quite a bit, in Frenchs view, though her examples from the
Nordic sagas tend to illustrate variations on fairly predictable themes of courage,
determination, generosity, and honor.

Later in the book
French explores the values of 18th- and 19th-century Native American warriors of the Great
Plains region. As she narrates various stories told by and about those tribes, the reader
may be struck by the contrast between the widespread reverence and respect accorded to the
souls of animals hunted for food, and the desire of each tribe to show its superiority
over every other tribe through violent conquest and domination, even occasionally by
killing unarmed women and children or torturing prisoners of war to death. But French
reminds us that whites, too, tended to regard Native Americans as subhuman, a view which
served to rationalize their own indiscriminate war tactics.

French then shifts
dramatically, this time to a description of the curious combination of Buddhist and
martial values evinced by the Chinese monks of the Shaolin Temple. Another dramatic swing
in subject brings the reader to the code of the Samurai. French narrates the emergence of
that fascinating set of values from an amalgam of Shinto, Confucian, and Zen Buddhist
beliefs, combined with uniquely Japanese forms of warrior honor and shame, which typically
dictated suicide over surrender.

In her concluding
chapter the author addresses the intriguing question, Are Terrorists Warriors?
Given that terrorists are usually regarded as murderers by definition, and that French
concluded in her first chapter that authentic warriors are not murderers, one might assume
that her answer to the question would be an easy No. And in a sense
thats exactly where she ends up. Along the way, though, she cites the doctrine of
double effect to remind us of the moral difference between directly targeting the innocent
versus accidentally killing them in war, as long as one tries ones best to minimize
collateral damage. She also points out that the tactics of al
Qaedaterrorists who profess to be Muslimsin reality violate many core Islamic
teachings. French too quickly disposes of the question of whether the 9/11 hijackers
exhibited some form of courage: Aristotles view that real courage must be in the
service of the right cause, which French cites exclusively, is not the only credible
phenomenology of courage.

All in all, however,
The Code of the Warrior is an impressively researched and eloquent work, well worth
careful study by military professionals and others interested in martial values. It
permits us to achieve insights regarding the similarities and differences between our
contemporary American military code and those of more distant times and places, thus
imparting authentic humanistic wisdom.

This is a remarkably
good telling of a very complex tale. Jon Latimer states his task as an attempt to provide
an objective accounting of a battle about which several dozen books have already been
written, several by notable historians. But Latimer

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quickly reminds us
that most previous works have a rather strong bias vis-à-vis one or the other of the
leading personalities, General Montgomery or Rommel in particular. To make it simple for
those who have not read all the previous books, Latimer leads off with a concise
historiography of the literature covering this campaign.

The events leading
up to the climactic battle are treated with due thoroughness given the primary objective
of the work. The chapter on Malta is wonderfully compact and informative, as are the
chapters that lead the reader to the selection and arrival of later Field Marshal Sir
Bernard Law Montgomery.

Once the battle
actually begins, however, the reader is subjected to an almost numbing recitation of
continuous attacks by one brigade or battalion after another. If the intent is to convey
the true state of development of the British Eighth Army, the author does so with
horrifying effectiveness. With rare exceptions the Eighth Armys infantry sacrifices
itself with a doggedness reminiscent of the Somme and Passchendaele. Now and then the
senior leaders are able to master the requirements of combined arms warfare, and when they
do the units accomplish their missions with devastating effectiveness. They do so often
enough to pull off a victory, but their inability to do so more often produces enormous
casualty lists and compromises the pursuit that might have followed. This reviewer was
struck by the mixture of hardened professionals laboring side by side with others who
display almost 19th-century regimental (amateur) attitudes. This is an army that is
learning its trade as a combined arms team at very high cost.

When I, as an
American, set forth to criticize our allies for their shortcomings, I am obliged to recall
that this book is focused on the 1940s and particularly 1942. I am further obligated to
recall that when the American forces landed in North Africa in October 1942, they too
demonstrated a naiveté toward combined arms operations that yielded the debacle of
Kasserine Pass. I cannot help but be struck by the fact that for two wars in a row, it
took engagement in actual combat to enlighten American military leaders as to the
realities of the war upon which they are embarking, as Clausewitz warned.
Observation and analysis, of which there was a good deal before American forces were
employed in both World War I and World War II, evidently needed a great deal more lead
time to generate an effective execution of what was learned in the training base. In the
battle of Alamein, American Army Air Forces supporting the British Eighth Army
demonstrated an ability to provide essential ground combat support, yet the knowledge of
how to execute this critical function was decidedly absent at the battle of Kasserine
Pass. The time was too short, and there was no extant mechanism, beyond a few liaison
reports, that would have effectively captured and integrated those lessons-learned into
the training base in a timely fashion.

As Latimer describes
it, British Eighth Army artillery recovered the reputation of the World War I Royal
Artillery Corps whenever all the pieces could be wired together for communication purposes
and held in place. But the reader must wonder just how much firepower it takes to
thoroughly subdue a crafty enemy. Latimer details the Eighth Army artillery preparations
for the opening battle and several subordinate operations, but as those operations unfold,
the infantry is shot to pieces time and again by undiscovered or undestroyed machine guns
and Axis artillery. While facilitating the advance of the infantry for most of the time,
the power of artil-

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lery in the defense
appears to have been remarkable. Indeed, almost every major Axis counterattack is
destroyed or halted by massive artillery concentrationsso long as communications
held togetherbut there were many occasions when it was the poor bloody
infantry that had to do the real work by manhandling the anti-tank guns when someone
was thoughtful enough to provide them.

Latimer is sparse
but decidedly high in his praise of the professionalism of the Eighth Armys support
services. He briefly contrasts the Germans paucity of all resources (and contrasts
the creature comforts of their Italian allies), but except for the surfeit or
deficit of petroleum products, none of the supply differential seemed to matter in the
long run. I would dare to suggest that here is grist for another doctoral dissertation.

Latimer is about as
evenhanded in his treatment of then-Lieutenant General Montgomery as anyone I have read
and paints him well, warts and wisdom. He is likewise evenhanded in evaluating
Montys predecessors and subordinates. He presents sufficient evidence to dismiss
several of the earlier attacks on Montgomery, but then leaves behind a mixed conclusion.
In one sense Montgomery was wielding a blunt instrument, even if it did have several sharp
edges. It is clear that he had a better grasp of the concept of combined arms warfare than
did most of his subordinates and that he was able to force upon them a degree of mutual
cooperation they seemed previously unable to achieve. It would, however, be too much to
ascribe any particular brilliance to Montgomery at Alameinmuch as he claimed for
himself.

War and Intervention: Issues for Contemporary Peace Operations.
By Michael V. Bhatia. Bloomfield, Conn.: Kumarian Press, 2003. 222 pages. $27.95 (paper). Reviewed
by Doug Bandow, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and author and editor of several
books, including Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World.

Should superpowers
do windows? The United States is engaged in long-term nation-building in Iraq,
Afghanistan, and the Balkans, leading efforts to confront potential nuclear proliferators
Iran and North Korea, and expanding traditional security ties throughout East Asia and
Europe. Americans should ask whether there is any limit to their global responsibilities.
Author Michael Bhatia inadvertently helps answer that question in War and Intervention
by demonstrating the pitfalls inherent to peace operations.

Bhatia treats
intervention as a given: between 1798 and 1993, he reports, the US military was engaged on
234 occasions, only five of which resulted in a declaration of war. Thus, he writes,
although presented by certain policymakers as a historical aberration, peace
operations are, instead, a contemporary manifestation of the continuing phenomenon of
American ground intervention. In his view, this historical tendency is reinforced by
Washingtons contemporary military dominance and global reach.

Washington often has
used military force and obviously is capable of doing so today around the globe. Still,
there remains a marked difference between defending American commerce from the Barbary
pirates and defeating American

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Indians as the
United States expanded across the continent, and sorting out varied civil wars and
guerrilla conflicts in far distant lands.

Mere ability to act
does not mean Washington should do so. Indeed, with American forces tied up pacifying
Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq, and Kosovo, Liberia looked like a country too far even for the
Bush Administration. Bhatias analysis suggests the value of caution and humility
regarding Americas ability to control international events.

The author ably
sorts through not only the different kinds of missions and requirements, but also why
success is often so difficult to achieve. Bhatia observes: A definitional haze
surrounds the varieties of peace operations, with a flurry of descriptions, terms, and
operational evolutions resulting in a general confusion of peacekeeping with peace
enforcement, and UN sanction with unilateral intervention. Especially given the
complex reasons of recent US administrations for acting, It is thus difficult to
determine where the humanitarian imperative ends and primary domestic- and foreign-policy
objectives begin, writes Bhatia.

The complicated
nature of contemporary peacekeeping reflects a changed international environment. Of 108
wars between 1989 and 1998, only seven were interstate. But outside involvement was common
and no longer limited to superpowers. The fight in the Congo (Zaire), explains Bhatia,
is a mix of internal and international conflicts, and of conventional units,
militias, and individual warlords, with components from Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia,
Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania.

The end of the Cold
War and collapse of nation-states has further decentralized conflict; public and private
organizations, including criminal organizations, often play important roles. This makes
reconstructing states even more difficult.

Circumstances also
vary widely. Are conflicts ripe for resolution, Bhatia asksare parties
ready for peace? As he notes, What is unique is that the contemporary phenomenon of
transitional administration involves the governance of territory by the United Nations and
is typically accomplished at the behest of and with the consent of the local
population. This usually means providing a full-service government, which became an
obvious problem in Iraq after the collapse of the Hussein regime.

Particularly
difficult is constructing a genuinely democratic order. As Bhatia writes, Elections
cannot be viewed as the sole method of appropriate local consultation or as an exit
strategy. Elections often deliver unexpected and unpleasant results, as in Bosnia,
where the nationalists have routinely triumphed. But the heavy-handed Western response has
done little to prepare that nation, such as it is, for an independent existence.

Finally, Bhatia
devotes a chapter to the use of military force. Peacekeeping is different from
warfighting: The exchange of military hostilities is neither the dominant nor
definitive aspect of peace operations. Instead, the deployment of an adequately robust
international contingent is most purposefully a method of opponent dissuasion and conflict
prevention. The actual use of force, then, should be minimal, nuanced, preventative, and
controlled.

As Bhatia relates,
some foreign militaries have proved particularly adept at such operationsAustralia
in East Timor, for instance. The Europeans, lacking Americas combat capabilities,
certainly could do more in this regard.

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In contrast, the
United States possesses the only military that, in the near future at least, is most
capable of taking on large contingencies, such as a war on the Korean peninsula. Instead
of reorienting and retraining US forces, they should be allowed to concentrate on
warfighting.

The issue goes even
deeper. The temptation to turn to America to right a mass of foreign wrongs is obviously
strong. But Washington should not be expected to do it all. And Bhatias book, a
useful guide to the complex operations to which America increasingly commits its military,
unintentionally illustrates the case for a more cautious and restrained approach to
peacekeeping and nation-building. These tasks are extraordinarily difficult to do, and
especially hard to do well.

For over 40 years,
the term stray voltage has been used by agriculturalists to describe voltage
developed on the grounded neutral system of a farm. If intense enough, the voltage can
cause a mild shock to animals, resulting in flinches or even avoidance behavior. Those who
read Stray Voltage: War in the Information Age by Brigadier General Wayne Michael
Hall (USA Ret.) may suffer similar effects. They might flinch with excitement over his new
ideas in this interesting book, or avoid portions of it due to a plethora of terms that
can exhaust the reader.

What first strikes
this reader is the extent to which Hall has deeply thought about concepts that have
consumed the pages of foreign and domestic military journals over the past few years.
Knowledge war, asymmetric war, information war, and information operations are a few of
them. Hall has put his soul into this work, and has done a commendable job of addressing
these and other topics few wish to consider. For this alone he deserves our praise and
admiration. That Hall has thought about each area deeply is clear throughout each chapter.
In the end, the books essence is built around two concepts: defending against enemy
attempts to disrupt US decisionmaking and damage our national will, while simultaneously
discussing US means to attack enemy (terrorists, guerillas, etc.) decisionmaking and will
to resist.

The commentary is
filled with details, and his weaving of one concept into another is done with care. He
uses current examples to promote his theory, and it is this method that produces the
flinches of excitement (and fear) about tomorrows reality. This is not your average
book on the information age. While agreeing with other commentary on the value of Stray
Voltage (creative, stimulating, controversial, informed, and comprehensive to name
just a few) there are one or two problem areas.

By the time one
finishes Stray Voltage, readers have encountered a myriad of new terms. Consider,
for example, just the term knowledge. The reader is introduced to knowledge war, knowledge
attribution, knowledge-based operations and strategy, knowledge engineering, knowledge
management, knowledge managers, knowledge mapping, knowledge rheostat, knowledge weapons,
knowledge maneu-

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ver, and knowledge
workers. These terms exhaust the serious reader who doesnt just accept Hall at face
value but attempts to ascertain if his ideas are of true value. General Hall must have
suffered the same exhaustion as he tried to handle each term and weave his tapestry.

Other terminology in
Stray Voltage also contains contradictions. Lets examine the term asymmetric
war. On page xi, asymmetric war is defined as the strategy, tactics, and tools a
weaker adversary uses to offset the superiority of a foe by attacking the stronger
forces vulnerabilities, using both direct and indirect approaches to hamper vital
functions or locations for the explicit purpose of seeking and exploiting
advantages. Page 43 notes that asymmetric war involves a strong force either
using or threatening to use an advantage that the weaker opponent cannot respond to; it
also involves a weak force seeking offsets against the stronger force; and it usually
presents a social or political dilemma to the stronger force. That is, in the first
case only a weaker adversarys role is addressed, and in the latter case both strong
and weak forces are addressed. Which one is it? Such confusing uses of terminology and
definitions are the major problems with the work.

Returning to the
positive aspects of the book, General Hall is absolutely correct in noting that we must
not mirror-image our opponent, and that we need to have people who think like our enemy
thinks. This is a very important point, one which he could not have emphasized enough. For
the so-called opposing force (OPFOR) to be successful as he recommends (military personnel
who understand how the other side thinks, how his culture views certain developments, and
what his operations order looks like), the OPFOR must be composed of foreign area officers
(FAOs) from the US armed forces and civilian area specialists.

Finally, Hall is
absolutely on point in emphasizing the need for thinkers in the years ahead. Thats
why Halls version of information superiority, for example, is so impressive. He has
a corner of the market now on what it really might mean, not just what someone else said
it meant. Thinkers like Hall wont simply accept terminology, they will examine and
critique it. He almost certainly does not want the reader to just accept his terms and
definitions either, but to think about these concepts for themselves.